New Moroccan law fails to protect women from forced marriage - activists

The new law criminalises "harassment, aggression, sexual exploitation or ill treatment of women"

By Heba Kanso

A new law criminalising violence against women that came into effect in Morocco on Wednesday does not fully protect women against forced marriage or domestic violence, activists said.

Campaigners broadly welcomed the new law, which criminalises "harassment, aggression, sexual exploitation or ill treatment of women" in Morocco.

But they criticised loopholes that would allow girls under 18 to marry and said a failure to define forced marriage would make it difficult to enforce a ban.

"How are women supposed to be protected when there is no definition of what is forced marriage?" said Stephanie Willman Bordat, co-founder of rights group Mobilising for Rights Associates.

"For some women, choice doesn't exist. When you have family pressure, social stigma on single women, poor economics ... all of these things - so what does forced look like?" Bordat told the Thomson Reuters foundation by phone from the capital, Rabat.

Nearly two-thirds of women in Morocco have experienced physical, psychological, sexual or economic abuse, according to a national survey.